The Dayton Daily News has covered Hara Arena for decades and has extensively reported on its final years. Depend on this newspaper for continuing coverage and in-depth reporting on the Trotwood location’s future.
Five-year-old Kristen Bruns first came to Hara Arena for a hockey game in 1973. Nine years earlier, her mother, Carolyn, sat front row for a Beach Boys concert.
On Aug. 27, 2016, they said goodbye.
“To me, this is like going to a visitation at a funeral,” said Kristen Bruns. “We’re just here to reminisce with friends and remember what life was like.”
After more than six decades in business, Hara Arena attracted several hundred people who came for the Trotwood facility's last day. The family-owned arena was forced to shut down after an internal, 20-year legal battle sent the financial livelihood of the business into turmoil, family members said.
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It was a three-ring circus of sorts — the arena open for people to explore from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., the Comic and Toy Show in the convention center and an auction in the exhibit hall.
Dozens of attendees walked the Comic and Toy Show, open for three bucks. A woman dressed as Princess Leah took pictures of Wonder Woman and Spider-Man as kids and adults browsed through comic books.
At the far end of the complex, auctioneers lined tables filled with the necessities for running an arena over the decades. Ashtrays, tickets, carafes, chandeliers, popcorn makers, a Craftsman toolbox and a snow blower — eligible for the highest bidder.
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And in the main arena, several dozen people walked the floor and concourse, peeking into press boxes and locker rooms long off-limits to the general public.
Smelling, for the last time, the place where they made so many memories.
“Coming here as a kid to see Big Time Wrestling — Bobo Brazil, Flying Fred Curry, The Sheik — just larger than life,” said Robert Ingram, who said his age was “in the single digits” when he first came in the 1970s. “You could smell blood and fights right here from hockey and wrestling.”
Listening, too, for sounds long gone.
“The Jackson 5 struck a harmonic chord vocally that I’ve never recovered from, right here where we’re standing,” Ingram said, while wife Cassandra recalled her Meadowdale High School graduation day in 1981.
“I can still hear the music walking in,” she said.
And sharing with son Robert III the memories, “bouncing off the ceilings and walls right here.”
“This is our Madison Square Garden, you know?” said Robert Ingram. “This is it, man, you hate to see it go, but it’s time.”
And that’s a problem, 10-year-old Robert III said, because he’d like to see something new here.
“What I would like to see happen here is, they should tear it down,” said Robert III. “But they should rebuild it and make it bigger and better.”
His mother agreed their neighborhood needs a revitalization. Over the years, she said, the community has started to vanish.
“You’ve taken our mall, our movie cinemas, now this,” Cassandra Ingram said. “When I say you, I mean the community, letting it decline and kind of giving up on the area. I think it’s time for a revitalization.”
With Hara Arena leaving, so too will local dollars, said the Bruns family.
“We’re already deciding where we can road trip to see other games,” said Kristen Bruns. “I think we’re going to hit the road and find some new hockey to watch.”
But it won’t be the same, her mother said.
“I can’t even imagine this winter,” Carolyn Bruns said. “Hara has always been a part of our lives, it seems.”
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